The present invention relates to a communications installation having a central controller, a number of peripheral controllers and a multiplicity of peripheral modules.
In communications installations configured in this manner, the peripheral controllers handle tasks of layer 2 according to the so-called ISO layer model, that is to say they are responsible for identification and correction of transmission errors and signalling synchronization. At the same time, they control the control traffic to the central controller. In this arrangement, a fixed number of predetermined subscribers or exchange lines is allocated to each peripheral controller. This has the disadvantage that when peak loads occur in individual peripheral controllers, overloading can occur and, in consequence, the response times of these peripheral controllers become too long whilst other peripheral controllers are not used to capacity. This unequal usage of the peripheral controllers results from the fact that the respective number of peripheral controllers exclusively depends on the number of existing exchange circuits or connected subscribers and not on the actual traffic volume.